But believe me, this is how I feel now. I don’t feel myself. I feel as if I am not myself. I don’t feel a lot of things. I don’t remember certain things. It started a few days ago when I had a sudden, short spell of amnesia. This strange in-and-out-of-memory thing began since.

Like, last night, watching a football (soccer) game between Bercelona and Paris St. Germaine, I was trying hard to remember a Spanish forward’s name — who often comes to my mind not because he is a great player like Messi or Ronaldo, but because he is one of the highest paid football players ever, but most of the time he fails to score. To me, he’s a rich dud.

Well…I couldn’t remember his name at all.

I tried to remember a routine medical test that doctors want me to do and I keep putting off year after year. Well…I couldn’t remember the name of that test at all…until my wife reminded me what test it was. She said…colonoscopy…remember?

Then, I remembered. Yet, I’ve been memorizing that name for years…not because I want to do it…but because I don’t.

Strange, indeed! It seems my negative, forgettable emotions are quickly disappearing out of my mind. I think that is a good thing to happen. Don’t you agree?

Anyway, I know you know what I know and what I don’t know. At least from the two examples I gave you just now. I remember positive, happy things and I want to forget negative, unhappy things. And it happens to me — most of the time — just that way.

Good…or bad. Who cares?

So, today, I decided to quickly put down a few things that you and I and most of us know and remember. It may be a Memory 101 lesson for today. It may be your waste of time. You decide. (But see, you must waste your time going through the waste of time before you decide it’s been a waste of time. Get the joke? 🙂

So, do it with me. You might actually like it and thank me for it.

What are some of the things you remember? A LOT OF THINGS. I don’t want to bother you with a 5,000-item list. Here’s a short one. You make up the rest.

The pre-list list.

(a) How to turn on your computer

(b) How to log on

(c) Passwords your life depends on 🙂

Then, the list list.

1. Your name.

2. Your date of birth.

3. City or village you grew up.

4. Names of your parents.

5. Names of the two or three people you love the most (you remember a lot more names, but I’m talking about the names you do remember even when you are in a daze or suffering from transient amnesia — like the one I went through).

6. Your address and home phone number.

7. Your most loved ones’ phone numbers.

8. How to look both ways before you cross the street.

9. If you’re driving, how to stop at a red light and go on a green light.

10. How to lock up the door before you leave home.

11. How to turn off the gas before you go off doing something else.

12. How to eat. (And, how to brush your teeth before or after eating).

13. How to drink.

14. How to undress before taking a shower and how to dress back up when you’re coming out of the shower.

Oh yeah…remember when to sing in the shower…and when to stop singing in the shower too!

15. How to speak.

16. How to speak or read your first language…and your second language…and your third language…and so on. (If you’re doing of them, articulately, you’re not in a spell of amnesia. I was able to speak in clear, articulate English when they took me to the hospital at midnight. Heck, I wanted to make sure I was okay, so I put a status update on my Facebook page and even joked that I was able to write clear English with flawless spelling and grammar. (I was tempted to write in Bengali too.) Yet, they took me to the hospital. Would you believe it? 🙂

17. How to hear and understand what you heard. (Again, forget the vile and evil things. Remember the good stuff. It’s healthy that way.)

18. How to see and understand what you saw.

19. How to smell…flowers…or fumes (from the gas burner you left on).

20. How to turn on and off your house or car keys.

21. How to go to bed and sleep.

I invite you to remember as many other things as you can and let me know about it. Your experience and my experience and our experiences may be somewhat dissimilar, but believe me, you and I and us can find a lot of similarities too. I challenge you to find the common experiences — as many of them as you can.